Penetration Testing Report: What’s Included & How to Use

Penetration testing reports provide a clear summary of a simulated cyberattack, outlining the scope, methods used, key findings, and supporting evidence. They highlight vulnerabilities discovered during testing, assign severity levels, and recommend specific steps to strengthen security and prevent future incidents. Testers commonly follow frameworks such as PTES, OWASP, and NIST to ensure comprehensive coverage. Penetration testing is used to support industry compliance demands for testing and fixing high risk issues.

All penetration tests should end with a clear, actionable report, delivered by the testers. Penetration testing reports are highly beneficial for company stakeholders, breaking down key security areas in need of remediation and encouraging regular retesting to ensure data policies stay within compliance expectations.

Many penetration testers build reports based around compliance requirements to satisfy recognized security frameworks, such as those set by the PCI DSS for card data handlers, and the NIST CSF adopted by many private organizations.

In this guide, we explore what a penetration testing report does, why it’s important, what it includes, and how you can build remediation plans from it.

What Is a Penetration Testing Report?

A penetration testing report is a final document produced at the end of a penetration test analysis, summarizing its findings, methodologies used, and recommendations for remediation and retesting.

Penetration testing reports are read by stakeholders, company executives, developers, and compliance specialists.

Therefore, reports are used differently by different audiences – executive stakeholders use findings to better understand risks to the business at large, while developers, administrators, and engineers use the technical advice to actually fix issues and prevent further weaknesses.

The VikingCloud team follows trusted frameworks to help shape the consistency of reports and to ensure their advice supports the compliance needs of the end client. For example, we frequently refer to:

• PTES (Penetration Testing Execution Standard) to clearly outline the scope, results, and technical details of tests
• OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project) to classify and rank threat severity and recommend coding and configuration actions
• NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) to document objectives and findings, and to tie them back to test cases and control families

This can involve a lot of technical detail, and given the variety of audiences referring to penetration tests, it’s always important that we offer thorough findings and guidance in plain language.

Types and Formats of Penetration Testing Reports

Penetration testing reports fall into several types depending on scope and access level: black-box reports simulate an external attacker with no internal knowledge, white-box reports include full source, architecture, and credentials for deep code/system review, and gray-box reports sit between those extremes with partial insight.

Reports are also categorized by target and location—external (internet-facing), internal (inside the network), web application, and hardware/embedded device testing—each requiring different evidence collection, validation steps, and risk framing to be useful to technical teams and leadership.

Report formats and templates standardize how findings are presented so stakeholders can act. A good template leads with an executive summary and overall risk posture, follows with a prioritized list of findings (attack narratives showing the exploit path), provides raw and corroborating evidence (screenshots, logs, POCs), maps issues to severity and remediation steps, and closes with appendices (scope, tools used, methodology).

Essential Sections Every Pen Test Report Should Include

Every penetration testing report should include an executive summary, a breakdown of scope and methodology, findings and evidence from testing, risk ratings and action prioritization, remediation and retesting recommendations, and a list of appendices breaking down testing actions and change logs.

Here’s more detail on how we break down each section through our own penetration testing services:

Executive Summary

An executive summary is a high-level breakdown of the analysis’s objectives, what was tested, timelines involved, critical findings, any quick wins found, and what the overall impacts are to the business involved. It is also a clear breakdown of the general risk themes facing the systems tested, and can include details about the tester’s accolades and credentials.

This summary is usually concise and written in plain language.

Scope & Methodology

This report section explores what techniques, tools, and methodologies were used to produce the results shared. For example, this section might include:

• Details of any in-scope or tested assets
• Specific testing timeframes and windows
• Any rules of engagement defined by the client
• Overviews of tools and software used
• Any predetermined limitations and assumptions addressed before testing

VikingCloud’s testers use this section to refer to the different stages of testing according to PTES, from pre-engagement and intelligence gathering through to threat modeling, vulnerability analysis, and exploitation.

Findings & Evidence

The findings and evidence section reveals vulnerabilities found during the analysis, grading with risk/severity scores such as those determined by the CVSS scale. This section clearly identifies proofs of concept, assets likely to be affected, and how exploitable is each weakness.

Beyond this, testers will detail the wider impact on the business involved, the likelihood of vulnerabilities causing problems, and map weaknesses back to concerns raised in OWASP and CWE (Common Weakness Enumeration) lists.

Risk Ratings & Prioritization

Risk scoring is typically based on the aforementioned CVSS system, which grades the severity of threats found. As Jonathan Risto for SANS explains:

“CVSS generates a score from 0 to 10 based on the severity of the vulnerability. A score of 0 means the vulnerability is less significant than the highest vulnerability with a score of 10, if you're only using CVSS. By using CVSS to prioritize vulnerabilities, you can focus on the most critical ones first and reduce the overall risk to your organization.”

SANS

A reliable report will produce a triage grid that identifies threats, impact levels, and the urgency of action required. Alongside, testers will assign actions required to reduce severity levels and thus threat opportunities.

Remediation & Retesting Plan

Further into the report will be a clear, actionable remediation and retesting schedule, whereby stakeholders know who takes ownership of which threats and how long it will take to remediate specific problems.

Testers will also identify areas that are “verified fixed” (i.e., where validation and action have been taken to eradicate a threat), or “risk accepted” (where the stakeholder / problem owner understands the threats involved and either accepts the risks of leaving the problem, or taking steps to address it).

Appendices

Penetration testing appendices include diagrams and lists that support the knowledge and recommendations offered in the body of the report. For example, testers typically provide change logs (where alterations may have been made during testing), lists of tool versions, visual diagrams of scope addressed, and lists of artifacts (including any screenshots and payloads recorded).

How to Read a Penetration Testing Report

Ideally, anyone reading penetration testing reports should treat them as roadmaps for addressing immediate problems and improving overall security. Executives should look carefully at how reports define immediate business impact and risk posture, while developers and engineers should ideally prioritize the risks outlined, thoroughly retest and remediate, and recreate the problem scenario(s) wherever possible.

Executives should think clearly about how the weaknesses found in the report translate into potential losses and customer impacts. Are there any vulnerabilities that directly impact data safety? What about the ongoing operations of critical infrastructure?

Although it should not fall to executives to manage people directly, they should also read penetration testing reports to ascertain where ownership of certain remediation tasks lie, and therefore understand how to address remediation efforts long-term (if the same weaknesses arise again).

Developers and engineers should pay close attention to threat rubrics and carefully work down the weakness listings and actions recommended. This will involve delegating specific tasks to certain areas and owners, and setting up clear quality assurance and retesting to ensure problems do not arise again.

With that in mind, when reading and understanding penetration testing reports, technical staff and managers should consider setting key performance indicators (KPIs) to ensure that all areas of concern are covered (and that the same problems don’t repeat themselves).

For example, technical staff could extract and monitor:

• Mean Time to Remediate (MTTR), or how long it takes teams to respond to threats and fix them
• Percentage of critical issues fixed
• Pass rate / rate of recurrence for weaknesses after retesting
• Vulnerability count, severity, and discovery rates
• Validation rates
• Risk score change

Of course, no two tests are the same, and it’s important to take time to carefully read reports so that all business levels and issue owners are aware of what happens next.

Compliance, Confidentiality, and Reporting Considerations

Penetration testing reports must balance transparency and confidentiality to protect sensitive data while meeting regulatory and legal obligations. Because these reports often contain details about system vulnerabilities and exploit paths, their distribution should be strictly controlled. A formal confidentiality statement and encrypted distribution process help ensure only authorized stakeholders access the information. Testing must also follow agreed-upon rules of engagement and defined scope to avoid liability concerns, unauthorized access, or legal violations.

From a compliance perspective, the structure and content of reports often reflect industry and regulatory frameworks. References to standards such as ISO 27001, NIST, HIPAA, PCI DSS, and regional laws like the Australian Privacy Act demonstrate adherence to recognized security practices and aid in audit readiness. Reports may also include compliance references mapping findings to specific controls or regulatory requirements, helping organizations remediate issues efficiently and maintain regulatory compliance.

Key considerations for compliant and confidential reporting include:

• Containing a confidentiality statement and controlled access list
• Using encrypted distribution methods for report delivery
• Clearly defining rules of engagement and scope to limit liability
• Mapping findings to relevant compliance frameworks (e.g., NIST, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, HIPAA)
• Documenting audit readiness and regulatory compliance evidence
• Ensuring legal review for cross-border data handling (e.g., Australian Privacy Act)
• Retaining records securely and archiving reports

What Do PCI/NIST Expect from a Report?

Both PCI and NIST have certain expectations from penetration testing reports. Regardless of evidence found, for example, PCI v4.0  expects regular testing to ensure weaknesses do not reoccur, and that card information is still held to a high security standard. NIST, meanwhile, recommends that reports are used to define mitigation activities, conduct cost/benefit analyses, and to set a clear benchmark for tracking security activities across a whole organization.

Security frameworks generally agree that PCI penetration testing and reporting (for example) should take place at least annually, and after significant changes are made.

Generally, reports should also validate any controls where segmentation is used (i.e., to separate card data from central databases), and identify where the user and tester have used methodologies accepted within their industries.

What’s more, reports should show regulators that firms are taking cybersecurity steps seriously by documenting what remediation steps they’ve taken, and when retesting has occurred. Ultimately, the more retesting and successful remediation, the better—reporting records showing improvement will always put firms in a positive light.

Building a Practical Remediation Plan

While all remediation plans will look slightly different from firm to firm, it’s vital to prioritize threats uncovered in reports by a number of factors. Stakeholders should address critical threats, those with the largest blast radius and most risk of exploitability, as a priority. It’s also important to assign owners and set service-level agreements based on threat severities.

Assigning ownership and setting clear retesting windows ensures that there is always accountability for areas that a penetration testing report brings to light. For example, it may be prudent to tie remediation ownership to change management and vulnerability management cycles. It’s wise to implement regular scanning and penetration testing schedules.

A good practice, hard to argue against, is to follow NIST’s objectives laid out  in the cybersecurity framework, CSF 2.0. This establishes six key functions to implement on the back of a penetration testing report:

• Govern: Establish and clearly communicate your risk strategies
• Identify: Understand your business’s core assets and where cybersecurity risks may arise
• Protect: Establish robust safeguards for core assets, including access controls and data protection policies
• Detect: Regularly monitor for weaknesses and set up tools to scan and sweep for cybersecurity events
• Respond: Get a plan in place where areas of the business work together to contain and handle incidents
• Recover: Form clear plans on how to recover from cybersecurity incidents regardless of size and impact

Penetration Test Reporting & Response Checklists

We’ve put together a quick checklist summarizing the above points to consider when evaluating penetration test reports and responsive actions to take. Please note, all penetration testing reports should follow standards set by PTES, OWASP and NIST. There are no single “universal” templates you should follow for scoring the quality of pen test reporting and how you respond. Also the factors you value may vary depending on different types of penetration testing.

Test Components and Functions

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Taking Action

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Overall, a reliable, effective penetration testing report clearly breaks down key findings and businesses must interpret and decide what end users and stakeholders must do to turn their cybersecurity postures around. This practice sets healthy behaviors to prevent weaknesses from arising and causing potential incidents in the future.

Managing penetration testing reports doesn’t have to be complex. With VikingCloud’s help, we can ensure any weaknesses are found and we can clearly advise you with actionable recommendations that won’t leave you scratching your head. Be sure to read our full guide on penetration testing examples, too, and learn more about what our processes involve.

FAQ About Penetration Testing Reports

What’s the difference between an executive summary and a technical report?

An executive summary is a high-level breakdown of what a penetration testing report contains, while a technical report goes into full, specific detail about scope, methodologies, and remediation. Both are highly useful in ensuring a report’s findings are actionable and easy to understand.

Do I need a PCI-specific report format?

No, you typically won’t need a report format specific to PCI, but it is important to ensure your processes adhere to the standards set by the PCI DSS in all testing and remediation you carry out. We recommend consulting the PCI DSS document (currently version 4.0.1) in the PCI SSC’s documents library for detailed information on pen testing requirements and corresponding testing procedures.

How are severities assigned?

Severities found during penetration testing are typically assigned based on the CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System). This widely-recognized framework ensures that potential weaknesses are clearly ranked based on their severity and business impact.